Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) has reduced its pricing structure for outbound data transfers in Amazon Web Services (AWS) dropping it by two cents per GB across all of its services.

The move comes as Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) officially launches its Windows Azure cloud computing platform as a pay service, prompting some industry watchers to see the AWS rate decrease as a signal of a price war about to erupt.

"We are constantly working to drive our costs down and become more operationally efficient," Amazon's Jeff Barr wrote in a blog post. "We then pass on those cost savings to our customers in the form of lower prices."

Effective February 1, AWS reduced the price of the first 10 TB per month from 17 cents per GB to 15 cents; the next 40 TB per month is reduced from 13 cents to 11 cents; the next 100 TB per month is lowered from 11 centers to 9 cents per GB; and over 150 TB per month is now reduced from 10 cents to 8 cents.